Finding the Green within the Grey

Macalester Blues

I saw a man at the grocery store with a Macalester baseball hat on. Brand new. Brilliant royal blue with the college name in orange. The grey-haired man wore glasses. I gasped as I saw the hat, so relieved to see one of my people in the upscale-grocery store.

“You’re wearing a Macalester hat?” I said. “I went there. 92. Did you go there? Have a kid there?”

“I went there, 65,” he answered. “I just went back for my 50th in June.”

“I miss it. I think about it all the time,” I said.

“Yeah, it was a very important part of my life,” he says to me.

We tell each other it was nice to meet each other as we leave the store and enter the grey, windy, rain soaked day. I drink him and his hat up one more time and turn back toward the rain, which hits my Barack Obama hat. And I start to cry. Again. I was crying in my car before I shopped. I’m giving myself permission to be sad about my friend dying even though I’ve not seen him in person in more than 20 years. I’m giving in to the overwhelming sadness that I couldn’t help him when he emailed me a few weeks ago. That I had nothing to give, only the knowledge that he was in deep.

I’m traveling back through the rain to my own rainy days. Pete’s ghost infiltrates these early December days. I push back against the thought that I have no right to feel so deeply. The man in the Macalester hat gives me permission to push aside the idea that it’s not my turn to grieve. It’s my turn to grieve what can’t be, what never was. And I grieve what was. My youth. Those days at Mac that formed who I became. Those years right after college. Those times when I was so scared to step into my future. All the moments I really wanted Peter to come with me into that art world just beyond not believing we could be artists. If I grabbed another soul like mine, could we jump past not believing into our bright futures?

I didn’t grab Pete and go. I grabbed myself and left St. Paul behind. I took one suitcase, hard, off-white, with brass closures. A one-way train ticket. I thought about Peter and how he liked to ride trains. I couldn’t stay in St. Paul. I wouldn’t let myself become who I wanted to be there. I don’t know why there was fear around every corner there, but there was.

I took myself and rolled away on a midnight train. A Mac friend met me at the station with a bottle of champagne. Lee and my parents toasted my leaving and I broke my parents’ hearts as we raised those glasses. But I knew it would be easier to breath in Seattle. I’m not sure how I knew, but I knew.

And this morning I cried in my car after meeting the man in the Macalester hat. Because not everyone makes it. We are so good at talking about people who rise up past their pasts, triumphant. I raise these words to my friend who didn’t make it. I cried in the car for not being able to say the exact right words when you wrote me about your darkness a few weeks ago. If I could, I would, if I could I would have pushed you into the now. So it wouldn’t be your ghost that I’m dancing with right now. I wouldn’t be typing these words at all. I wouldn’t be flashing back into the past, to the people we used to be, striving to grow up and out into the world past Macalester. God, I miss that safe place and who we used to be there.

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Nancy Schatz Alton

I used to ride the playground ponies — painted metal creature swings behind my childhood home — and dream of a book with my name on it: Nancy Schatz. Years later, I walked that same playground and young girl asked me my age. Maybe I was 19. Shocked, she asked if I was married. Nope, not yet, I laughed in reply.

Now I’m married and my body’s pretty close to being 50 years old. My first dream came true with one minor adjustment. The name on the cover of those books is “Nancy Schatz Alton.” I think it took writing these two holistic healthcare guides — The Healthy Back Book and The Healthy Knees Book — to believe I really am a writer. But I’ve been a writer before I could pencil the alphabet on the itchy lined paper in Kindergarten. It’s just who I am.

I wear many other definitions. I’m lucky enough to be a mom to a teenager and a tween. I’m a freelance writer, editor and writing teacher and coach, too. I’m a baker and a short-order cook, an off-key singer and car dancer. I’m a former long distance runner, an avid reader and a lover of color. I’m also a spy, because writers are spies, right?

This blog was born a few years ago when I finally got tired of denying myself the privilege of having a blog. I love sharing my words, and if these thoughts can help someone else, even better. As this blog has evolved, some of what I have written is part of a memoir manuscript entitled “But Still and Yet: Navigating the Learning Differences World with My Daughter.” That’s the tale of being and becoming a mother. No, it’s not the story of my first child’s birth and how I stepped into this new role, although there are many fine books about this very topic. This memoir is about learning to embrace the idea that life doesn’t always get to be easy for our offspring. If you aren’t a parent, the journey I take is the same journey all humans take during this lifetime. This memoir answers this question: how do we crack ourselves open to become our best possible selves?

Boom. Enjoy my blog. Say hello via a comment if you have can. And Welcome to Within The Words, Finding the Green within the Grey,.

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